And if we told you that Googlewhen it was still an embryonic project, was tested on a Server built with LEGO bricks? In the 1996 the founders of what would become the most used search engine in the world, Larry Page And Sergey Brinstill students atUniversity of Stanford They found themselves having to face a not indifferent technical (and economic) problem: to manage the archiving of the enormous quantity of web data with which to test their research algorithm, Pagerank. To deal with this need, the two young engineers decided to build a server made of Lego bricks, a practical, functional and modular solution to organize the storage necessary for the tests. Today that server is exposed to the University of Stanford.
The story of the Google server made with LEGO bricks
In the 1996when Google was just an experimental project, Larry Page And Sergey Brin they were still students from the University of Stanford and worked inside the Digital Library Projectan initiative financed by prestigious entities such as the Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the Darp (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Nsf (National Science Foundation). The goal was to scan the web to analyze the structure of the links and test an algorithm that would revolutionize the way the information was sought online. The main problem was that the web was growing at an exponential rhythm and Google needed an immense amount of storage space to store the data it collected. In those days, the rigid discs from 4 GB They were the largest available on the market, and the two founders needed at least about ten.
If we put a pinch of “romanticism” in the history of the Lego di Google server, we can perceive something that goes Beyond simple hardware. In fact, that server was not only a pile of bricks and rigid discs assembled “at least worse”, but certainly an emblem of the pioneering spirit of Page and Brin is also an emblem. Spirit that was a fundamental ingredient to transform Google from startup to internet giant.
Because the server was built with Lego bricks: the reason
Not having enough economic resources to buy expensive professional storage systems, the Page and Brin, they combined their technical and creative skills and built an envelope for disks using Lego bricks, thus taking advantage of the modularity and simplicity of assembly typical of this material. Not only did the choice of Lego allowed to create a Economic and expandable systembut also made one possible optimal ventilation managementa fundamental feature for the correct functioning of rigid discs.
In commenting on the story, on the website of theUniversity of Stanford reads:
Since a lot of disk space was needed to test PageRank on real data from the World Wide Web, Sergey and Larry assembled 10 of the largest units available (4 gigabytes each) in this low -cost cabinet, decorated in an extravagant way with toy bricks. Their software could therefore index 24 million pages per week (at the time, a huge number).
As a result of their initial work in Stanford, the two founded a company called Google in 1998. By 2008, Google reported that its thousands of servers had indexed more than a trillion of unique pages.
